Editorial Content for Five

Have you ever looked at the people around you on a bus, plane or subway platform and wondered what brought them to the same place at the same time? Ilona Bannister takes these aimless musings, upends them and crafts them into something wholly her own in the most innovative, creative thriller you will read this year.

“Someone will die here this morning, at this suburban train station. It will happen in the next five minutes.” So begins FIVE, which already is setting the stage for a tense, pressure-filled five minutes that only we are aware will change the lives of its characters forever. 

Walking us through the subway platform, Bannister introduces each of her main characters: Emma, a rich woman struggling with parenting her son, Gideon, who at six is already displaying sociopathic tendencies; Gideon, whose recent uptick in violence has pushed his mother to her limits; Liam, a powerful businessman who, unbeknownst to Gideon, is actually the boy’s father and needs Emma’s support on a precarious deal; Mrs. Worth, a grumpy old woman attempting to visit her estranged adult son for the first time since his wife’s death; and Sonny, a gorgeous but troubled young man who has come to the subway to end his life to avoid a gambling debt. 

“Consider these five in relation to one another. Consider them in relation to themselves…. But please don’t hang about. We don’t have much time,” Bannister warns.

"An extraordinary thriller with one of the most memorable voices I have read in ages, FIVE is sure to top this year’s best-of lists and announce Ilona Bannister as a talent to watch, one of the most inventive authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading."

If five minutes seems all too quick to take on the role of judge, jury and executioner, you’re in luck: Studies show that only 56 percent of the UK’s trains are on time thanks to staff shortages, signal failure and general malaise. So when the fateful train is delayed, it gives us time to get to know these five characters --- and what Bannister reveals is even more shocking than her initial premise. 

Up first we have Emma, a certified “Rich Bitch” whose shrewd coldness has earned her a lucrative career, an endless flight up the professional ladder…and the disdain of her female peers. Unlike them, and especially her stupid, flighty sister, she has never wanted for anything: a husband, a family, a boring, mundane life full of dinners and playdates. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like to win, especially at the things she sees others losing at, like her sister’s infertility struggle. 

So Emma approaches her boss, Liam, with a deal: a brief but torrid affair, a pregnancy and no strings attached. Gideon arrives within the year, and by the time he is toddling about, she realizes that she has made a terrible mistake. Gideon, the gorgeous boy she loves even before she is sure what love is, is damaged and disturbed. Emma knows it better than anyone: the same cold, calculating predator that hides behind his bright baby eyes lives behind hers as well.

Liam might have been a perfect match for Emma in a different life. Born to an essentially single mother and twin to a brother with cerebral palsy, he rose from hardscrabble roots to become one of the country’s most powerful and wealthy entrepreneurs. Always decked out in bespoke suits that barely hide his washboard abs, Liam maintains the gap between his front teeth and the accent that screams of poor beginnings in an attempt to win over investors and commoners alike. 

However, the self-made man is not exactly self-made at all. For years, Liam has used his brother’s disability as a shield, as proof that he is not just rich and out of touch; he actually cares. But when his brother’s intelligence and wealth begin to highlight the imbalance in their relationship, he cracks. He wants to save someone so he can prove that he is not just Liam the suit, but also Liam the hero. At the point that Liam arrives on the platform, he is desperate to make amends with his brother --- but, more importantly, to get him to agree to a lucrative deal that will change their lives forever.

Farther down the platform, septuagenarian Mrs. Worth is doing what she does best: judging. She judges Emma, the tired, thinly spread mother; she judges Sonny, the gorgeous young man whose flamboyant suit is marred by his sockless ankles; and mostly, though she’d never admit it, she judges herself. Born to a cold, broken man whose wartime injuries took from him his greatest passion --- surgery --- Mrs. Worth grew up in a house devoid of love but rich in painful, traumatic lessons involving many small animals, a scalpel and the pervasive scent of bleach.

Though love does not come easy to Mrs. Worth, she has always loved and never regretted her son, which is why she made the most difficult choice of all in estranging herself from him when her judgment, oddness and inability to conform made their relationship impossible. Now, preparing to board a train to attend her daughter-in-law’s funeral, she wonders if she can ever really fix the past. 

And lastly, we have Sonny, the apple of his parents’ eyes, whose early hyperactivity and inability to focus were overlooked when his father died in a tragic accident. Desperate to keep her family intact, his mother smoothed over his wrongdoings, explaining them away as the mark of a brilliant mind rather than a damaged one. Now, over $30,000 in debt to an online gambling site, Sonny has chosen to end it all.

With the train fast approaching the station, a skirmish ensues. Emma’s phone flies to the rails; Liam jumps down to retrieve it, prompting an attack from Gideon; Mrs. Worth suffers a heart attack in the mayhem; and Sonny leaps down to help Liam. And only one station away, the conductor lifts the breaks, the train begins its journey, and one character’s fate is forever sealed. Having heard their stories --- childhood trauma, grief, bad decisions and, always, love --- Bannister gives us one final charge: “One of them will die despite your attachment to them, regardless of your judgment of their behaviors or your empathy with their situation…. But perhaps you should ask yourself why, what makes them worthy of surviving in the internal universe of your brain where you are God.” 

Sharply observed, meticulously plotted and creative beyond belief, FIVE is a genre-breaker, a game-changer and a mind-bender. Right from the shocking premise, Bannister grips our hearts and asks us to look unflinchingly into the lives of these five characters not as they imagine themselves, but as they are. That means digging deep into their emotional depths, their childhood traumas, and the thoughts they hope to keep hidden. 

Employing an omniscient narrator who addresses us directly, Bannister asks us to look upon these five distinct, miraculous lives and judge, pray for and guess at who will die. “There is probably one that you’re okay with getting rid of. Of course there is. You’ve chosen your favorite,” the narrator admonishes. By inviting us directly into the plot, Bannister forces us to weigh the facts of a human life and determine their fate, forever implicating us in the same tragic moment as her characters. 

An extraordinary thriller with one of the most memorable voices I have read in ages, FIVE is sure to top this year’s best-of lists and announce Ilona Bannister as a talent to watch, one of the most inventive authors I have ever had the pleasure of reading.